To start off, I'm happy to report that I'm warming up to Robert Bathurst as our narrator as it seems he's warming up to the characters. :) He's gone a bit gentler, and better capturing the tone of Three Pines and especially the calmcoolcollected Armand Gamache in the process.

I was a fan of the creepy cobrador thread in this book, and was also—to my surprise—gripped by the timeline jumping between the murder mystery and trial of the accused. This was one of the more layered Gamache books, and I think the overlap worked well here because the threads were very intimately and intricately connected. You always have to pay attention in a Louise Penny mystery, but here I was much more committed to this endeavor because I knew everything would turn out to be important.

The balance between Three Pines and the Sûreté also worked well here, and I liked the fact that we knew at least some of what the high stakes were from pretty early on rather than finding out at the last minute. The pacing was great, revelations were well-timed and effective, and the layers were just complex enough without being too overwhelming. "Glass Houses" is one of Penny's best so far!